


A Loving Feeling

by shouyowo



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28796244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouyowo/pseuds/shouyowo
Summary: “You’re saying you don’t care about Emiko-san?”Tadashi blushes and frowns exaggeratedly at his best friend, “You know what I meant.”For a while, silence settles between them. Kei doesn’t move to unpause the television, and neither does Tadashi. They sit together quietly until Kei speaks up.“Well… you care about me, right?”Tadashi wonders if he’s still blushing from embarrassment, or if there is some other reason.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	A Loving Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> hi yet another unfinished fic from me that i may or may not come back to! writing is rly hard for me right now but this was sitting in my google drive for a while and i wanted to post it. i am rly attached to this concept so i’ll try to come back and add more later :) 
> 
> title and concept inspired by Mitski’s song of the same name.

When Tadashi is thirteen, he has his first kiss. 

It isn’t as spectacular as kissing has always seemed in the television shows and movies he’s watched on the sofa at Kei’s house, when Akiteru is home for the weekend and the adult Tsukishima’s force them to spend time together. It is, honestly, a little bit boring. He can’t help but think that he would rather be playing video games with Kei, in the warm yellow lighting of his upstairs bedroom, a vanilla scented candle burning on Kei’s old wooden dresser that always creaks when you stand next to it. 

It isn’t that the girl is a bad kisser—he honestly doesn’t even know what good kissing is—it’s just that it’s a little unpleasant, and it makes him wish that he were anywhere else but here, at a birthday party for a boy in class who he doesn’t even remember the name of. And he’s also just a little upset, for part of him always wished his first kiss would be something special, with someone special, not just the result of a forty-five minute game of truth-or-dare, played while the birthday boy’s parents were out on a quick trip to pick up dinner. 

Kei is here also, sitting next to him stiffly and watching uncomfortably as Emiko from the classroom next to theirs kisses Tadashi on the mouth. It makes his skin tingle, his stomach lurk, and though he has always been smart and considers himself above-average, he cannot figure out why. 

Tadashi tries to focus on the taste of her banana-flavored chapstick. It’s the same kind, he realizes, as the one Kei keeps in his lunchbox, and for some reason that intimate knowledge makes his face burn. Tadashi focuses on the flavor of her chapstick, and it’s over quick. And yet, when he sees the frown adorning Kei’s lips, he begins to feel like it dragged on for hours. 

The birthday party ends not long after it began, and neither Tadashi nor Kei are close enough with the boy who threw it to spend the night, so they pile into Tadashi’s mother’s car when she arrives to pick them up, and decide to sleep over at his house instead. Part of Tadashi wishes they were going to Kei’s house, because Kei’s parents always buy better snacks than his own parents, and because he knows Akiretu, who is home for the weekend, has probably brought a gift for Kei from university, and since Kei is still hell-bent on pretending like Akiteru doesn’t exist, that gift will inevitably go to Tadashi. But when they arrive home, and they both curl up in Tadashi’s bed, he’s content. 

Until he remembers the kiss. 

Kei notices the shift in atmosphere, pauses the documentary they’re watching on Tadashi’s tiny box TV, and asks what’s wrong. 

“I’m fine, Kei!” Tadashi tries to be convincing. Technically he isn’t really lying, because he doesn’t even know why he’s so upset, and he doesn’t know how to put it into words, either. 

“Lying isn’t cool, Tadashi,” Kei says seriously, pushing up his glasses with one finger and looking impossibly cool. 

“It’s not a lie!” Tadashi defends, crossing his arms and wiggling out of the blanket to distance himself from Kei, “It’s just that… I can’t stop thinking about Emiko-san...” 

If he were paying attention, he might have noticed the way Kei looked to the floor and shifted uneasily. 

“Do you have a crush on her or something?” he asked, trying to sound as though he didn’t care at all. But, really, Tadashi had begun to get good at reading Kei, and he could tell this conversation was unpleasant for him. 

“No! It’s not that at all…. It’s just… I kind of wish I got to have my first kiss with someone I actually cared about…” 

Unexpectedly, Kei laughs. 

“You’re saying you don’t care about Emiko-san?” 

Tadashi blushes and frowns exaggeratedly at his best friend, “You know what I meant.” 

For a while, silence settles between them. Kei doesn’t move to unpause the television, and neither does Tadashi. They sit together quietly until Kei speaks up. 

“Well… you care about me, right?” 

Tadashi wonders if he’s still blushing from embarrassment, or if there is some other reason. 

“Obviously, Kei! You’re my best friend!” 

It’s Kei’s turn to blush. 

“Shut up, Tadashi,” he says, and then, “What if we kissed? And then you could just pretend I was your first kiss. Instead of Emiko.” 

It makes sense. Sort of. It’s normal to experiment with your friends, and kissing Kei seems a lot more pleasant than kissing Emiko. It would be nice to be able to tell his future grandchildren that his first kiss was meaningful, and not with a girl he barely knew because of a dare. 

“Okay,” he answers, belatedly. 

Again they sit in relative silence, until they both move forward at the same time and gasp. Tadashi laughs and Kei remains expressionless. 

“Close your eyes,” he orders, and Tadashi does. He closes his eyes and sits patiently. 

There’s nothing for a moment. He almost opens his eyes. And then there’s a gentle breath against his slightly puckered lips, and Kei is kissing him. 

And it’s different. It’s _so_ different. 

Tadashi feels a million different things, but in the end, he feels like his heart is full. So full he thinks it might burst. Kei tastes like the pink cotton candy they shared earlier, before they left the party. He tastes sweet and his lips are soft, the most delightful pressure against his own. 

And like before, it’s over quick. Tadashi opens his eyes and stares at Kei, bleary-eyed. 

Kei stares back. But then Tadashi realizes he isn’t wearing his glasses. He thinks that if he tried, he could find a metaphor in that. 

“Well?” Kei asks. 

When Tadashi is thirteen, he has his second kiss. But no one besides himself and Kei ever have to know that it wasn’t his first. 

* * *

Tadashi tries to bring up their kiss a few times after it happens, but Kei shuts him down every time. Sometimes he ignores him altogether, changes the topic completely or pretends like he never heard him. At thirteen, it doesn’t really hurt. He understands Kei better than most people, and he understands that he struggles to talk about his feelings. Tadashi appreciates his kindness nonetheless. 

* * *

In their third and final year of middle school, when they’ve turned fourteen, Tadashi stops calling Kei by his first name and begins calling him, ‘Tsukki,’ instead. Kei says that they’re getting too old to talk to each other that way anymore, and Tadashi understands. People at school have begun to snicker behind their palms when they hear squeals of, “I’m sorry, Kei!” or deadpans of “Tadashi, shut up.” 

At first, he started calling him Tsukishima. But to Tadashi, Tsukishima was reserved for Kei’s parents, and calling him by that name felt too formal. It made him think of the parents of his best friend. So, he settled on ‘Tsukki.’ 

It comes out completely by accident, the first time he says it. They are at the park, tossing a volleyball back and forth next to the slide shaped like a dinosaur, the one that he and Kei used to spend hours playing on when they were younger. 

Volleyball always makes Kei think of Akiteru, and thinking of Akiteru always puts him in a sour mood. He exhales deeply and throws the ball to Tadashi without looking. It hits him square in the nose. 

“Tsukki..!” Tadashi squeals, flopping onto his back and covering his reddening face with both hands. Tears began to prick in the corners of his eyes from the pain, and he felt a warm spurt of blood dribble from his left nostril. 

“Tada- Yamaguchi,” Kei yelps; his name on Kei’s lips sounds strange. It sounds as though he had torn it from the depths of his throat, like it was fighting the whole way up. He crawls on his hands and knees to where Tadashi lays in the dirt, face still covered by his hands. He doesn’t want Kei to see his tears, or to see the inevitable bruise forming across the bridge of his nose, covering up the spattering of freckles there. 

Kei’s long fingers grip his hands and pull them aside gently. 

“Yamaguchi, your nose is bleeding,” he says. The way he says it, Tadashi knows he’s trying to make it sound as though it’s something casual, something necessary to be pointed out but not something that he’s really worried about. But Tadashi has gotten good at reading Kei, these days. Really. He can hear the slight lilt in his tone, knows that the sight of the blood makes him feel needlessly guilty. 

“It’s okay, Tsukki,” the nickname falls from his lips naturally, “It was an accident.” 

Tadashi wonders if it were an accident, truly. He wonders if it was Kei’s pent-up anger towards Akiteru. If, maybe, he looked at Tadashi and pretended his dark hair was blonde, that his freckled face was clear and pale. 

“Yeah,” Kei answers, almost a whisper. He tugs the sleeve of his blue hoodie over his fist and wipes away the streak of blood on Tadashi’s face. Inexplicably, Tadashi feels his cheeks heat up. He knows it isn’t from the pain. Kei’s deep brown eyes are fixed on his face behind his glasses and his blonde eyebrows are furrowed as he studies the damage done. 

Tadashi feels his stomach lurk as he realizes, suddenly, that what he wants most in this moment is to lean up and kiss him. To kiss Kei. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, as tight as he possibly can. Kei says nothing in response. 

And then he feels soft lips against his skin. He smells banana-flavored chapstick. He realizes that Kei is kissing his forehead. 

His eyes shoot open, but Kei has moved away. It happens too quickly. If he weren’t so sure of what he felt, he might not even have realized he was kissed. 

“Why- why did you do that?” He asks, meeting Kei’s stare. 

Kei says nothing. 

“To make you feel better,” he answers, finally, after what feels like an eternity has passed, “Because I’m someone you care about.” 

Tadashi blushes, remembering his ‘first’ kiss. 

“Shut up, Tsukki,” he pouts. 

“No, you shut up, Yamaguchi,” Kei answers, pulling a face at him. 

Tadashi cannot help but laugh, watching as his best friend stands up and dusts off his blue jeans. He takes the hand offered to him and pulls himself up. 

“Let’s go home and make sure you aren’t concussed,” Kei says, even though he’s already started walking away. Tadashi watches him leave for a moment. He watches the wind ruffle the shorter hairs on the back of his neck, and wonders if he stared hard enough, could he see the brown stain on Kei’s jacket sleeve, where the blood from his nose has already begun to dry. 

Tadashi watches him leave for a moment, and then jogs to catch up with him, gripping his arm when he gets to his side. Kei doesn’t say anything, doesn’t react at all. For the rest of the walk home, he holds onto his arm, and he thinks to himself, _this is someone I really care about._


End file.
